Woman of the Year (Criterion Collection)

Before Katharine Hepburn ever met Spencer Tracy, she wanted him as her costar in this film. George Stevens's Woman of the Year, conceived to build on the smashing comeback Hepburn had made in The Philadelphia Story, is the story of rival newspaper reporters who wed only to find that their careers aren't so compatible, and in it the pair forged a fresh and realistic vision of what marriage could be. The freewheeling but pinpoint-sharp screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. And Michael Kanin won an Academy Award, and Hepburn was nominated for best actress. Woman of the Year marks the beginning of the personal and professional union between Hepburn and Tracy, who would go on to make eight more films together, and it stands as a dazzling, funny, and sometimes rueful observation of what it takes for men and women to get along-both in the workplace and out of it.